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Topic: Hasbro / RotS Figures in the Media (Read 1706 times)

So this was elsewhere but it's a pretty good read and a topic I find quite curious... It says a lot about Star Wars that I've been saying now for years but which I've been told I was "wrong" by more than a handful of people...

I tend to agree with the analyst's response to the story when saying that Star Wars is not something Hasbro should be putting their hopes into... However I don't believe they honestly are either.

Something I bring to the table, and something I bet most people have never read but it's a fun thing to check out, is a read on the Company's History via Hasbro.com... It's funny when reading that PR article that they have on their main page because you get a better look overall at this company's trends, and where they've put a lot of weight over the years.

It's sad, but Star Wars is a mere blip on Hasbro's radar, and their Company History page shows it... To them it's just a brand they kept from the hands of someone else I feel. I think they are making a push with the last movie, but I don't believe Hasbro is really putting a lot of hope that Star Wars will rebound the Boy's Toys division as a whole. I think the reporter's giving more credit to the license and Hasbro PR work than they deserve, and the Analyst gives a better breakdown of Hasbro's view... the license is a gamble, it always has been, and there's plenty backing that up.

I think Star Wars is in for dark days after E3 unfortunately. I think it'll be more a liability to the Boy's Toys division rather than a blessing, short of some incredible popularity out of E3 and into new popular media.

Given the positive performance of its "Star Wars" merchandise last year, Hasbro's chief financial officer David Hargreaves told analysts that he expects the toys and games linked to the epic to "be a profitable line for us this year."

OTC - oh, oh What else came out last year? Not much in the way of prequel figures, relative to OTC + VOTC though there were some. That might be a telling factor to pay attention to, perhaps to our detriment. But rehashes aside, I think solid packaging now plays an important role in sales for Star Wars. I notice that the category is Boys Toys, but it makes no discerning between adult and child versions of boys. Scott and others have long made the argument that this is not a children's line, no matter how much Hasbro may want it to be. Did they realize this in 2004 by releasing specific lines geared at specific age segments? Did that contribute to the success as much or more than anything else?

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The company struggled with sales of Star Wars toys in 1999 after Hasbro originally paid about $590 million for the exclusive worldwide rights.

Too much hype for Episode I and Lucas let them down. It wasn't an absolutely horrible movie, but it was certainly at least one notch down from the preceding films. The toys were marginal because many of the characters were marginal. Ric Olie?

Is it just that Hasbro has not realized that the markets are more fickle than ever and that brands, for the most part, are transient? How long would beyblade really last? It was trendy. T_R_E_N_D_Y. Trends end. Few lines tend to revitalize successfully. I note they mention Barbie in there. Barbie is doing something they haven't done before, they have movies out now that are essentially toy commercials (something Star Wars has been accused of being more than once). My daughter wants all the stuff she can get from Princess and the Pauper because the movie appeals to its target (rather than its producer).

From the pictures it seems we are to get a very dark Star Wars movie, darker than ESB. Good, it's what we need and probably what the line needs. Will it save the toys? Don't know, depends on how much George thinks we need Brian's Song or Love Story mixed in with the slaughter of Jedi. It's supposed to be dark. I expect Jesse is correct, this line will diminish in fairly short order.

I wish Hasbro would create some sort of division, something like "Hasbro Select" where they focus on adult collectors, and keep the Star Wars line going strong. In 3-4 years, interest will have definitely died down, but I think the line could keep going as exclusives somewhere.

I'd like to see the line continue in the years post-ROTS as well, and think that the collector base is large enough to support the line, at least in some aspect. Maybe it won't necessarily be the big retail line it is now, but maybe in some specialty way like CHEWIE mentioned. To be honest, I wouldn't mind even if the releases were a little more limited, I could use to save a little money . It would just be nice to see the Star Wars line continue, at least in some way, where we can still get some new figures here and there each year, even if it is only 20 per year. It will be interesting to see what the future holds. I'm sure ROTS can hold things up for this year and next, and then 2007 will be the test to see where things will go from there.

You know, when I signed on for the original POTF2 run of figures back in 95, I figured we would be damn lucky to get ten new OT figures every year. I was amazed with all the stuff that came out in '97, but chalked that up to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity cooinciding with the Special Editions. I could never have imagined that 50+ different figures would be coming each year for the duration of the prequels, nor that the year leading up to the final movie would have been filled almost entirely with OT product. If Hasbro can find a way to keep cranking out ten new figures a year, I'll still be happy. Anything more than that is gravy in my eyes.

Can they make a profit off these things? If Hasbro truly believes they can run the line with the same kind of life and gusto of the Kenner one, they are really nuts, and might as well get out of the toy business. Kids just don't play with toys like we used to. I would set up a battlefield in the backyard, spend all day with my two best friends as the battle raged, and have a blast. Today kids get the same thrill thru video games, with less effort. We would have summer-long storylines that we just couldn't wait to play through to some dramatic conclusion we hadn't even thought of yet. Today--eh, yeah, they have video-games for that too. Toys now are more glyphs than playthings, symbols of something rather than avatars to another world. Hasbro needs to address that before they can turn the precious profit.

My 2 cents. The pegs will be packed through the 05 Christmas Holiday. Some new OTC will make a small appearance in 06. The TV show will come out and the line will try to stay afloat with this media. The TV show will start off strong and will dwindle like alot of the Star Trek Series. The line will get smaller and smaller. By 2008 the line will be dead. With maybe an occasional fig here and there based off one of the movies Anniversaries. It was a fun ride, but like many other people I am looking forward for all this to end.

In the long run, I have no sympathy for Hasbro is they consider Star Wars a failure. While much of the collector driven prodeuct that has come out has been great, the mainstream toys (figures, ships) that hit when the movies come out are generally pretty crummy as TOYS. They fall apart, the weapons break, the action features don't work, and the figures don't interact well with the vehicles.

I can think of a dozen reasons why Hasbro has been less than succesful with Star Wars, but put simply, they haven't made great toys.